40th anniversary of the jumbo jet

On 9 February 1969, the Boeing 747-100, or jumbo jet, took to the skies for the first time. Forty years later, after countless flights and passengers ranging from George Bush and Barack Obama to the pope and the Spice Girls, the latest addition to the family, the 747-8, is rolling off the production line

One half of the windscreen for the Boeing 747-100 is closely examined by engineers in 1969. The cockpit was sited high to ensure that 747s could be
converted into freighters, with doors at the front, if and when they were
replaced by supersonic airliners

Pan Am was Boeing's first customer for the jumbo jet, ordering 25 planes at a cost of $525m (£369m). This publicity shot, taken in December 1969, shows the Pan Am stewardesses posing onboard. A month later, the first of the fleet entered active service

Local manager Gisela Olsson in the cockpit suite of the Jumbo Hostel, reportedly the world's first hostel in an airplane, at Arlanda airport in Stockholm in January 2009. There are 74 beds in the retired Boeing 747-200 and a wedding suite in the cockpit

The space shuttle Endeavour, fresh from the STS-126 mission and mounted atop its modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft, flies over California's Mojave Desert on its way back to the Kennedy Space Center in 2008